When it comes to sending regular emails to your customers, it can be hard to see past the everyday in your industry.
You might think your business is too boring to warrant sending marketing emails. Even worse; you have nothing anyone wants to hear.
The truth? Businesses always have something to say.
It's already claimed that email is 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers than Facebook or Twitter. Having something to write home about is, therefore, key.
That’s where we come in. If you're struggling to find inspiration for your email campaigns, we’ve put together a three-step plan to help you unlock potential talking points. Let’s dive in:
Step 1
The following two questions are a gateway which will lead you to more and more detail about your business and your customers. Answering them will generate multiple relevant thoughts and conversations you can share with readers.
1. What do I talk about with my customers?
When you’re dealing with a customer face-to-face, do you just talk about what you sell? Probably not. You will have a much more rounded relationship than that – and the issues you discuss will provide a natural step-off point for future email content.
2. What does my business actually do?
You don't just sell X to Y. What does your X allow Y to do?
Take a shop selling workplace printers. They don't only supply printers and other related products; they might sell the fastest printers and supply a toner cartridge delivery service. They, therefore, make office managers' lives easier and more efficient. Office efficiency could, therefore, form a key theme for your content.
When you recognise your customers' wider problems and identify the solutions you provide, you can better guide customers to the right product based on their needs. And you’ll have more to talk about to get them there.
Step 2
Provide value
Following on from Step 1, your next challenge is to recognise the value your email campaigns can offer. Look at the topics you've created. What insight can you provide to conversations in this area? What exclusive offer can you extend to readers that will help them resolve a particular issue?
By offering something relevant, current and directly helpful to your customer, you'll see email offers hit home where they didn't in the past.
Take our workplace printer company once more; through exploring their customers' needs, they identify that in December there is a pressing need for their customers to print name tags for the office Secret Santa. That's the time for our printer company to send an exclusive email offer for half-price printer labels.
Depending on your industry, you may not want to be quite so on-the-nose with your content. UK insurers Simply Business’ emails about insurance weren’t generating engagement. By asking their customers what they were interested in, they realised that readers most valued resources for small business owners - not information about insurance. By tailoring their email and web content to explore these topics, Simply Business consistently offered something interesting for customers to read. Their web traffic increased by 25% as a result.
Never be afraid to ask customers what they want to read about.
Step 3
Strategy
In the past, you may have struggled to devise a long-term content strategy for your email campaigns. By following steps one and two above you've already done the hard work. You have a series of topics, conversations and offers to move forward with. The next step is to create an email template for your campaigns, then choose what to release, when and to whom.
With a content strategy and an email template in place, you won't have to struggle to come up with new inspiration each month. Instead, your path will be clearly defined. That's good news for your customers too, who will know what to expect from your campaigns and even depend on them – a key result of content consistency. Turns out your business is pretty interesting, after all.
For more email marketing advice check out the Winbox blog or contact Marc in person.
Email Marketing
content writing
